Prior to the conception and development of the present invention, hat and cap owners have sought ways to dry their headgear after laundering or getting it wet while still retaining the shape of the hat or cap. Wrinkles can easily appear during drying or even normal storage.
Over many years, numerous devices have been proposed for preserving the shape of hats or caps during storage and/or drying. Inflatable hat blocks have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 716,251, 1,742,397, 2,129,720, and 2,536,913; however, these devices did not comprehend billed caps. In addition, they do not have a base that could be used to clamp a cap bill in position thereon. There have been several prior art patents disclosing various means of preserving the shape of caps, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,941,601, 5,148,954, 5,161,719, 5,725,134, and 6,968,985. All of these last five utilize some sort of rigid or mechanically adjustable insert that fits inside the cap. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,491,256, Payne et al disclose a drying insert for caps that has clips for engaging with the bill of a cap, but the cage-like insert fits inside the cap and is not adjustable to a range of sizes. Grommes in U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,271 discloses a drying form for wet caps that clamps the bill to a base, but there is no inflatable device and nothing to create or maintain curvature in the bill.